October 19, 2014

Vote No to Jeanne Shaheen

Jeanne Shaheen is one of seven Senate Democrats who signed a March 2012 letter requesting Douglas H. Shulman, Commissioner of the IRS, "to immediately change the administrative framework for enforcement of the tax code as it applies to groups designated as 'social welfare' organizations."

Shaheen's letter got results. A year later in May 10, 2013 a headline in the Washington Post read, "IRS admits targeting conservatives for tax scrutiny in 2012 election." Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw tax-exempt groups, blamed the Cincinnati Office saying, "They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title."

When asked about this at a congressional hearing Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw tax-exempt groups, refused to testify invoking her fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. What better indication of improper political activity by IRS than this? In effect the IRS suppressed the conservative message through tax policy in order to enhance Barack Obama's re-election chances.

Another four years of Barack Obama. Lucky us. But there is a point to this. If you don't believe the IRS should be working for the Democratic party, vote "No" to another six years of Jeanne Shaheen.

Hope and Change!

October 01, 2014

You Are Not Mary's Cause

The charges leveled in this powerful campaign ad by Elbert Guillory against Louisiana encumbant Senator Mary Landrieu could also be said of any other Democrat running this year... and those not running, as well.

September 23, 2014

A New Innovation of the Obama IRS

Perusing the IRS Inspector General's report, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, a Professor of Law at Georgetown, noticed a troubling finding.

According to the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO [‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

It wasn't just Tea Party groups who were subjected to heightened scrutiny by the IRS.

This is a new low for American government — targeting those who would teach others about its founding document. Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon went to great lengths to try to conceal the facts of his constitutional violations, but it never occurred to him to conceal the meaning of the Constitution itself, by targeting its teachers. Politicians have always been tempted to try to censor their political adversaries; but none has been so bold as to try to suppress constitutional education directly. Presidents have always sought to push against the constitutional limits of their power; but never have they targeted those who merely teach about such limits. In short, never before has the federal government singled out for special scrutiny those who would teach their fellow citizens about our magnificent Constitution. This is the new innovation of Obama’s IRS.

September 22, 2014

Climate Change - The Stakes

Climate Change, formerly known as Global Warming, is a high stakes game, and the hysteria on display yesterday afternoon in New York provides dramatic emphasis.

Naomi Klein, author of a new book on the “crisis,” This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, said, “I have seen the future, and it looks like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.” In her new book she demands that North America and Europe pay reparations to poorer countries to compensate for the climate change they cause. She calls her plan a “Marshall Plan for the Earth” and acknowledges that it would cost “hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars.”

Can you guess where those "hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars" will come from? Bingo, if you guessed the American tax payer. Ms Klein has a different answer, though.

“Need more money? Print some!”

Apparently, her understanding of monetary theory is on a par with her understanding of the climate. News flash for Ms. Klein: There is no free lunch. Printing more money will only shift the cost climate boondoggles to poorest of us, the ones who can't protect what little they have by fleeing the sinking dollar for something else that might hold some value.

No matter. Climate hysteria works for Naomi Klein. She's become a best selling author by grinding the anti-capitalist axe. With her latest effort, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, she both promotes and cashes in on the anti-capitalist hysteria by predicting the end of civilization, an eventuality brought on by catastophic climate change, which of course is the bitter fruit of corporate profits.

"Hundreds of billions if not trillions" buys a lot of hysteria, and said hysteria will undoubtedly bring in a load of cash for Ms. Klein. Her book was scheduled to be released this month, so you might say the Climate Summit in New york is the culmination of her book tour. What a brilliant marketing strategy!

The cllimate itself, however, is not at stake, no matter how hysterical they get down in the Big Apple. Activist powers that be didn't change the name from "Global Warming" to "Global Climate Change" for nothing.

Oregon-based physicist Gordon Fulks sums it up well: “CO2 is said to be responsible for global warming that is not occurring, for accelerated sea-level rise that is not occurring, for net glacial and sea ice melt that is not occurring . . . and for increasing extreme weather that is not occurring.”

May I suggest, a new approach to Climate Science is needed. Stop worrying about the CO2 and start paying attention to the USD. In other words, follow the money.

Note: This is not a review of Ms. Klein's new book. In fact, I have no intention of ever paying money for a copy, so my chances of ever reading it are slim to none.

September 17, 2014

The Allure of Secession

And which of the last true-believing pilgrims in the Church of Hope and Change, his fraying Shepard Fairey T-shirt his only protection against the chill of the frozen-foods aisle at Trader Joe’s, does not dream of living in a nation with no SUV-driving Rick Perry voters who drink cheap beer un-ironically?

September 16, 2014

Scrubbed

According to Raymond Maxwell an after-hours session was conducted in the basement at State Department headquarters in DC, to prevent any damaging documents from being turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisers.

September 15, 2014

Leadership, Obama Style

In his essay, Myron vs Atilla, Richard Fernandez observes that it is "the neglected, boring area of workaday life is the secret sword of the West." The Cold War was won because Reagan outflanked the Soviets, says Mr. Fernandez. America outproduced the Soviet Union, and Fernandez calls this America's "productive flank."

The productive flank solves scarcity problems by growing out of it, while Islamism and Socialism solve the same problem by plunder and rationing respectively.

So why, he asks, with threats looming throughout the world, why isn't America "rampaging down the productive flank?"

One possible explanation is that the president, Great Man that is, isn’t aware of the potential of plumbers or drilling or nuclear energy. For him, the field is still dominated by titans such as himself who will solve everything from the socialist equivalent of a pulpit: the teleprompter.

Yes, that would be one explanation. But is ISIS a problem that Obama feels obligated to solve? You wouldn't think so, if you were to judge by the number of conditions he puts on fighting it. There has to be a coalition. The U.S. will not be the leader. American troops will not be deployed in combat roles. Iraq must have a more inclusive government or America won't take part in the effort.

It was the resignation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki that may finally have backed Obama into the corner. Al Maliki was the impediment to that inclusive Iraqi government, upon which military assistance depended. With him gone Obama had little choice but to commit America to the war against ISIS. So far, I'm aware of no deadlines that have been set for pulling America out of the impending fight, but Obama may set one later on to give himself an escape hatch.

In any case, the "secret sword" will remain in its sheath. While we may ultimately prevail by productively outflanking ISIS, I doubt that it will be while Obama is still in office. He'd really rather not unleash the productive might of America. Otherwise, the Keystone Pipeline would have been approved long ago. His promise to defeat ISIS is just so much talk, as transitory as any of his pronouncements, meant only to stave off a rout of the Democrats in the midterm elections. Obama's real enemy is not ISIS.

September 12, 2014

Quote of the Day

The anti-war movement is MIA as this war, er counter­terrorism operation, begins. Back when Bush was waging war, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now it’s “racism.” If you speak truth to power in the Obama era, they call it hate speech. The IRS will audit you.

June 17, 2014

Sharyl Attkisson on the Missing IRS Emails

Is there any possibility that the Obama administration and the IRS are not criminally obstructing the House Ways and Means Committee investigation into the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups? On Friday the IRS announced that it had lost email communications between Lois Lerner and outside agencies for the period between January of 2009 and April of 2011. A computer crash, the IRS said.

It so happens that the emails requested by Ways and Means included Lerner's communications with the White House, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Federal Elections Commission and the offices of congressional Democrats. Just those communications, for just that particular time period when the IRS was admittedly targeting Tea Party and conservative groups, are the ones that the IRS now claims were lost because of the crash. How is that possible?

In light of this announcement Sharyl Attkisson has formulated some questions for the IRS.

Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash and federal data loss; documentation reflecting all attempts to recover the materials; and the remediation records documenting the fix. This material should include the names of all officials and technicians involved, as well as all internal communications about the matter.

Please provide all documents and emails that refer to the crash from the time that it happened through the IRS’ disclosure to Congress Friday that it had occurred.

Please provide the documents that show the computer crash and lost data were appropriately reported to the required entities including any contractor servicing the IRS. If the incident was not reported, please explain why.

Please provide a list summarizing what other data was irretrievably lost in the computer crash. If the loss involved any personal data, was the loss disclosed to those impacted? If not, why?

Please provide documentation reflecting any security analyses done to assess the impact of the crash and lost materials. If such analyses were not performed, why not?

Please provide documentation showing the steps taken to recover the material, and the names of all technicians who attempted the recovery.

Please explain why redundancies required for federal systems were either not used or were not effective in restoring the lost materials, and provide documentation showing how this shortfall has been remediated.

Please provide any documents reflecting an investigation into how the crash resulted in the irretrievable loss of federal data and what factors were found to be responsible for the existence of this situation.

I would also ask for those who discovered and reported the crash to testify under oath, as well as any officials who reported the materials as having been irretrievably lost.

Is it still possible to believe that Obama himself had no hand in the targeting? Hard to imagine.

Update: Mark Tapscott notes in a Washington Examiner column:

On the same day the new HOGR report was made public, Mitchell -- a partner in the Foley & Lardner law firm -- reminded Justice Department attorneys that multiple federal laws require preservation of all emails concerning official government business.

The emails must also be preserved as evidence in litigation, including the civil suit Mitchell filed against the government and a dozen individual IRS employees on behalf of True the Vote, one of the Tea Party group's most egregiously harassed by the IRS.

In other words, besides destroying federal property, anybody who may have had a hand in making that computer crash could also face evidence-tampering charges. Serious jail time follows convictions.